


Light

by justanothersong



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Inner Dialogue, Movie Spoilers, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 17:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5013703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thoughts in the mind of Sir Thomas Sharpe.</p><p>WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN THE FILM. IT CONTAINS SPOILERS. GO SEE THE MOVIE FIRST.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light

Different. She is different, and it is maddening.

The others, they were all the same. Sweet, yes, but simpering. Vapid. Dropping their handkerchiefs for him to retrieve and fluttering about like so many painted birds if he offered them so much as a smile.

He knew what they saw. He knew the figure he must cut, young and heir to and old title. 

But he was different. She saw through all of that. Saw the cut of his suit was a decade out of style, that his fine shoes were aged and worn.

He thought he could soldier through it, do what needed to be done. Even if he faltered, there would be Lucille. She’d never let him lose his head. Or worse, his heart.

That is what Lucille did, after all, what she had always done. She was his protector, his savior, keeping him safe through all the cold, lonely years. She kept them both safe, no matter the cost.

Lucille was all he had in the world; and he knew that he was all Lucille wanted.

 

But this one is different. There’s a curiosity in her, a fire. Even as she seeks his hand for comfort, he feels a thrill that was never there before. When she begins to waste, he begins to falter.

The old house is dank and empty, cavernous and full of nothing but the cold and the clay. But Edith brings light, and laughter, and god, dare he say it? Dare he even say it?

 

He loves Lucille, he does, but now he wonders… He’d known it was wrong, some part of him, much as he tried to pretend otherwise. Lucille, she never cared, reveled in it even. 

Why had he stayed, all this time? He wonders it now, when he never had before. He hadn’t needed to stay. He could have let them take her, take Lucille and put her someplace… no. No, he can’t even think on that now. Lucille was ill but those places… they were worse.

If he left her alone in the house, she’d go even more mad.

So he stayed. Kept her happy. Kept her safe. Kept her bed warm. He owed her, after all; how could he repay every beating she had taken for him? How many caresses of her scarred and broken skin would eclipse the sting of their mother’s lashes?

He tried so damn hard not to fall.

 

How could she ever want him, after what he had done? 

Those women… he hadn’t hated them, not the way Lucille had. He had pitied them all, in the end, when it was too late to stop it. He was weak. Too weak.

Too weak now, when Edith asks to get away, when she asks to stay in town for the night, just one night, just the two of them.

God, she was beautiful. She was light. Heavenly. And he was nothing but filthy red clay.

For a moment, he thinks Lucille will understand. She loves him, after all; she’d want him to be happy. They could leave it all behind, pretend as though it never happened.

He should have known better.

He should have seen the knife.

Even as he grew cold and his sister threw himself over his dying body, Thomas could only gulp a few last breaths of cold stale attic air and think of her. His light. His love.

 _Edith_ , he thought. _Edith, my darling. I love you. I love you so. And I’m so, SO very sorry._

**Author's Note:**

> Damn you, Tom Hiddleston.


End file.
